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Halfway through the final month of our calendar, and it's almost all over. Baseball still has one regular-season series and a likely quick exit from the Big 12 tournament, while the track team will obviously be sending some representatives to the NCAA championships. But other than that, the miserable and depressing 2015-16 campaign is just about finished.
The BatCats (26-26, 8-13) rebounded from the ignominy of losing a game to Kansas (20-31-1, 6-14) by taking the final two games this weekend and claiming victory in the 2016 Sunflower Showdown. Sunday's win wasn't easy; Corey Fischer spotted the Jayhawks three runs in the top of the first and gave up another before exiting in the third. K-State then mounted a comeback to secure the rivalry win.
The Cats are now tied for seventh with Baylor; both teams are a game and a half ahead of Kansas. Baylor finishes the season with a three-game set at Texas, while the Jayhawks visit Oklahoma State. K-State wraps things up in Fort Worth. The Wildcats could finally clinch a Big 12 Championship berth on Friday with a win over the Frogs combined with a Jayhawk loss, but the greatest probability here is that the Cats clinch as a result of two Kansas losses -- and finish in eighth, a game or two back of Baylor.
The Capital-Journal's Matt Galloway reports.
K-State's women nabbed three more individual Big 12 titles Sunday, including a 1-2 finish in the high jump, and for a brief moment both the Wildcat men and women were in first place unofficially. But neither squad saw much success once the focus shifted to the cinders, and that lackluster performance in running events led to a third-place finish for the women and fifth for the men. Texas, once again, swept both titles.
In the other Big 12 championship in which K-State participated this weekend, the Wildcat crew finished in fourth place in the Big 12 Rowing Championship. The Cats only earned entry into the 1v8 and 3v8 grand finals. Texas won the conference championship, winning all five grand finals; Oklahoma and Kansas were second and third, with West Virginia fifth. Madi Haney was the only Wildcat rower named All-Big 12 at the end of the regatta.
Three other associate members compete for purposes of automatic qualification to the NCAA championship, which still went to Texas. In those standings, K-State finished fifth, as Tennessee slid into third place ahead of the Jayhawks. West Virginia was still last, being outscored by Old Dominion and Alabama.